Pages

Friday, January 6, 2017

Of Dragons and Elderlings

If you've read my posts and listened to any of my music, you'll have noticed that it's mostly about video games. But, while I do enjoy gaming for the interactive experience (nothing quite beats being the protagonist of the story), my true love is the stories, no matter what form they take. Thus, I love reading too, and my choice of literature is fantasy. Of course.

One of my favorite authors is Robin Hobb, whose Farseer Trilogy I read in junior high, and since then I've consumed most of the other works set in the Realm of the Elderlings. I love the detail with which Hobb describes her world and her characters, who feel like real people, even the non-human ones. Hobb doesn't shy away from tragedy or dealing with disturbing themes (such as slavery, torture, or animal abuse), but neither does she kill off major characters simply for shock value. For me, the stories bring back a true childlike feeling of wonder and provide a beautiful world to dive into whenever I need to escape the real one.

Tribute to the Rain Wilds Chronicles

A tribute to this series, then, was definitely in order. The lyrics of this song are inspired by the Rain Wilds Chronicles tetralogy, mostly because the introduction screamed DRAGON!!111! to me ;) (Does it not bring to mind a beautiful, magnificent magical creature emerging from the morning mists?) However, I'm sure inspiration would not be difficult to find for ten more songs. At the very least, it would be an absolute injustice not to tribute a song to FitzChivalry Farseer and Nighteyes, so that will probably happen sometime in the future.

Lyrics:

Incomplete
you came into this world;
Weak and powerless
with every breath you take;
Bound to earth,
your pride kicked to the ground;
But place your trust in me,
be what you were born to be;

And then my heart,
bursting with pride,
will dance to the beat of your wings in flight;
Then my soul,
silent for so long,
will dance and sing to your dragon song;

Incomplete
I came into this world;
Shunned and powerless,
they cast us all aside;
Bound to you,
now we fight just to survive;
Together we'll become
more than what we are apart;

CHORUS x 2

Cover Art


Click to enlarge.

As you might have noticed, I dabble in photo editing/paintovers and have long been wanting to incorporate my art into my music videos (they're on an equal level of "unprofessional", so it can't hurt, right?) So here's my take on an Elderling; think of it as "digital cosplay" if you will. I do these by combining photo editing techniques with manual painting, and the challenge lies in making the photo and its painted parts meld together so that it is not obvious where the "seams" are, so to speak. Here, the face is edited but everything else, including the hair, was painted from scratch. I'll admit it's a bit rushed (I had to get the video uploaded before going back to writing my Master's again) so the scales on the face, for example, aren't a 100%, but I learned tons from doing it.

Got Curious?

In case you became interested in reading Hobb's works, I would suggest starting with the Farseer Trilogy, as it is the chronological starting point of the entire series. I would then follow up with the Liveship Traders, the Tawny Man Trilogy, the Rain Wilds Chronicles, in that order, before finally turning to the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy (which, at the time of writing this has two of the three books published).

Of course, Hobb has also written the Soldier Son Trilogy, which I have all but finished - I find it to be a slightly less engaging read as the characters are not quite as charming as in the other books, but it is still a very good series worthy of checking out.

No comments:

Post a Comment